


there will be bruises, there will be blood

by kuro49



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Drabble, M/M, Mentions of (canon) Cancer, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 10:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3725749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how you find out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there will be bruises, there will be blood

**Author's Note:**

> or sad hot dads in love. :'( partly inspired by this [fanart by mlizard](http://mlizard.tumblr.com/post/60291800684/day-3-sick-days-your-blood-on-my-face) on tumblr.

You can hear the water running in the bathroom, and sitting up on Stacker’s bed, his sheets pooling around your waist, you can only hear the blood rushing through your ears at the dawning realization.

Hidden in those first few months by the meticulous cut alone, his suits getting loose around his frame. The increased Metharocin doses he is prescribed, and the habitual way he ducks out of frame during private video calls he makes to you when the two of you are apart for months at a time.

You notice. But you don’t ever ask.

And he, he doesn’t tell you.

It is the bright smears across your face now, the red that lands wet and warm when he reels back from a second kiss. The red that has you tasting copper at the corner of your mouth.

What you see coming is that he will keep this from you.

What you don’t, though, is that this is how you find out.

 

He doesn’t leave you, not today. (Not for a little longer.) This is the mantra that you repeat until the end of the war.

 

“How long?”

You ask, with your fingertips covered in his blood and him, bare feet as he pads out of the joined bathroom. He has a hard time looking at you, sitting there on his bed, in barely anything except circuitry scars and bruises from your last fight in Striker.

“Stacker, how long has it been?”

The word is difficult to get out, and it is even harder to digest.

“Onibaba.”

He has a neatly folded square of wet paper towel between his fingers, but you don’t know how to take it from him without getting his blood on everything else. He gives you time to look away, or to pull back from him.

Except you don’t, you don’t know how to.

Because you have always thought this.

“You aren’t supposed to go first.”

You are, you don’t put yourself out there in Lucky, then Striker to be the one to bury everyone else. On the account that it has to end, neither one of you need to stand at the edge of the Pacific Ocean to imagine that this is how it has to end.

Stacker smiles, and he is no longer bleeding but you are still bruised.

“Let me help you with that.”

The tilt of your head for him is automatic when he speaks. This time, it lands wet and cool across your face as he cleans his blood from you.

 

XXX Kuro


End file.
